EXTREME SPORTS; 30 Fall Ill After Race Through A Jungle

Participants in the Eco-Challenge expedition race in Malaysian Borneo that ended Sept. 1 got more than they bargained for, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday. The C.D.C. said that at least 30 of the 155 Americans who participated in the event have come down with a bacterial infection, leptospirosis, and many have been hospitalized.

The C.D.C. is investigating how the racers got the infection, which causes severe fever, headache, chills, muscle pain and cramps. If untreated, it can lead to kidney and liver failure or meningitis. Because the infection is hard to diagnose and potentially deadly, the C.D.C. is urging athletes with symptoms to consult with their doctors and discuss taking doxycycline, an antibiotic that eradicates the infection.

Even if someone feels all right, the C.D.C. is still recommending a doctor's visit to discuss taking doxycycline preventively, said Dr. Nancy Rosenstein of the C.D.C.'s National Center for Infectious Diseases. Leptospirosis can incubate from a few days to a few months.

The World Health Organization has been notified in an effort to reach all 304 participants. In all, 76 four-person teams from 22 countries paid $12,500 to enter the Eco-Challenge, plus thousands more on equipment and travel.

In the 12-day Eco-Challenge, racers sailed on open ocean, and then mountain biked and slogged through torrential jungle rain and mud while being assaulted by voracious leeches. After that, they swam and canoed in a storm-swollen river, then waded through caves filled with bat guano. It is unclear whether the bacteria was in the river or the bat caves.

The first racer felled was a 40-year-old New Yorker, Vadim Khazatsky, who participated as part of Team RacingThePlanet.com. Khazatsky, a managing director at Salomon Smith Barney, said he got a high fever a week into the race.

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The onsite medical staff gave him intravenous fluids and transferred him on a 10-hour bus ride to a hospital. When Khazatsky's 104-degree fever did not respond to initial treatment, doctors gave him a trio of high-dose antibiotics.

''They gave me this carpet-bombing,'' Khazatsky said. He was still weak upon his return to New York and consulted his physician, Bradley Connor. Dr. Connor, medical director of the New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine, posted his case online in GeoSentinel, a database maintained by travel medicine specialists. Colleagues from London and Toronto reported similar illnesses in Eco-Challenge racers. Dr. Connor called the C.D.C. on Thursday.

Louise Cooper of West Hills, Calif., who raced on Team Oobe, spent four days at U.C.L.A. Medical Center. ''I had a headache so bad I just wanted someone to shoot me,'' said Cooper, a breast cancer survivor.

Cooper does not blame race officials for the outbreak. ''I'm not that quick to judge and point fingers, because we all go into these things knowing the risks,'' she said.

Although Cooper is looking forward to her next race, in New Zealand in November, she said she would not do another jungle event. In 1994, a New Zealand athlete spent 10 days in intensive care after an adventure race through Borneo with circulatory collapse and kidney failure because of leptospirosis. Last year, a number of racers got leptospirosis after a Philippines adventure race.